


A Long Road Ahead

by AtomicPen



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 18:46:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4846331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomicPen/pseuds/AtomicPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Circle hadn't been bad, not to her, but she knew she was fortunate. The Blight hadn't been as devastating to her as she'd feared, either, and it surprised her when she enjoyed the sense of purpose it gave her.<br/>It was everything after it ended that suddenly became difficult.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>snapshots and ficlets revolving around Aelethenn Amell</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End of the Beginning

She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

The way it loomed up before her, dark scales glistening in the guttering light, leathery wings stretched out wide enough to cast a shadow well beyond their membranous boundaries. Its eyes were whirling chasms of greens and deep violets, and she could feel a sharp whispering dragging along her veins that grew stronger the closer she got–but that was different (yet somehow similar) than the singing she heard echoing inside her mind. That was nothing new, the siren voice of the Fade and its vast and deep corners, and her hand reflexively adjusted on the worn grip of her staff.

She had thought she was ready for this, that the past weeks and months had prepared her for this culmination, but now she realized despite her years of study and knowledge and arcane mastery –even before she ever set foot outside the Tower as a Warden and all the experiences that brought–it now became painfully clear that it was all inadequate.

If she were a more experienced Warden, perhaps she could move her feet more easily, perhaps she could drown out the jagged edges of that horrid whispering; if she were an empirically-trained mage rather than a sheltered, mostly book-learned one, perhaps she would have more powerful spells to call to mind, rather than the ones she had that all seemed woefully weak in the face of such immensity and power.

And in a single breath she shook it all from herself, as a mabari shaking off water from a downpour; it all was no matter, either she would fail or she would succeed at this point, but in either case, she had to move forward and begin.


	2. Worth the Wait

“At this pace, I will outdistance you, after all.”

She was ahead of him and grinning breathless, pausing with one boot on a rock to the side of the narrow, overgrown path. Oval sedge grasses rustled in a breeze, nestled in-between lady-fern and and bright bundles of yellow saxifrage. Dark hair, unbound and drifting in the wind, framed her shoulders as Aelethenn looked down and waited for him.

Returning her smile with one of his own, a soft chuckle escaped in the process. “Sorry–I was enjoying the view.”

Amusement tugged at the corners of her mouth and she looked out beyond the edge of the slope they climbed at the land below. The Bannorn lay on their right, to the east, green-yellow waves and rolls in the afternoon sun. It was late summer, and soon the vast fields would be truly golden in time for the first harvest.

“It is a sight to see,” she agreed, turning warm grey eyes back to him. “But it will be better if we keep going.”

His smile widened. “All right.”

Pressing up from the spot he’d stopped on to catch up to her, he adjusted the cloth satchel he carried over his shoulder as he went. Once he reached her, she set off again, leading the way–though by all intents he should have known the mountain paths here better than she. A low humming filled the air only a few paces later, and she didn’t need to look back at him before she said anything.

“Confirms my suspicion you have a song for every occasion.”

The only reply she received was a louder hum, the tune old and familiar to both of them.

Sun warm on their shoulders, Aedan’s song was the only sound above the wind that traveled with them on their climb. The path was winding and barely wider than two footspans across, but neither had trouble finding purchase as it inclined leisurely upward.

“Why don’t you sing with me?” he asked after a while.

She kept her eyes on the path snaking above them, disappearing around mossy outcroppings and needle-leafed shrubs. “I will,” she replied, cheeks rosy from the sunlight on them all morning, but said no more than that.

Seeming content with her answer, he resumed humming as they continued, absently wishing for a walking stick like her staff, using his knees as pushing points when the path grew steep for several feet. The climb grew difficult after that, and their ascent slowed for careful footing and even he paused in his humming to concentrate. Their reward for that last stretch was more than worth it.

All at once, the path flattened out onto a broad, gentle slope. It widened and straightened, angling lazily toward a bubbling stream on the far side of the heath spread out before them. They paused to catch their breaths once they reached level ground again, eyes wandering over a sudden field of sandworts and sedges, with the stately petals of white dryas flecking the grasses. The most stunning sight, the one they’d climbed so far for, was the expanse of tiny, belled purple and white flowers that spread like an ornate rug all along the banks of the stream.

Coming up to stand beside her, he was able to catch her smile out of the corner of his vision.

“There it all is,” she breathed.

“ _Will ye go, lassie, go_ ,” he sang, voice hushed. It gained him a look, handed up with the smallest tilt of her chin.

“I will,” she repeated, then surged into a light jog down to the stream, leaving him to catch up with her once again.

In the middle of the heather, she sat as he joined her, looking up at him, waiting. To this unspoken cue, his voice burbled into sweet song again, and she closed her eyes, listening as he slid the satchel off his shoulder and sank to the ground beside her. When he got to the refrain and she hadn’t accompanied him yet, he stopped and tilted his head at her.

“You said you would sing with me,” he chided gently.

Her laugh was a quiet thing, reminiscent of long hallways and shelves of books. “I like listening to you. It’s one of my favorites, you know.” Eyes light grey as predawn, but far warmer, settled on him, steady.

“I know,” he said.

Motioning to the cloth in his hands, she told him, “Hold that open.” He obliged her, and she tugged at a handful of thyme until it came free, then placed it in the satchel. As she repeated this, she slipped gradually into song, and he smiled, listening for a few breaths as she had, before joining her.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been a long year, Aelethenn admitted to herself. Almost as long as the one before it, but without the companionship she had so grown used to. The Blight was over, ended exactly how she had planned, and not how she had planned for at all. The only Warden supposed to be dead was Loghain, yet he still lived, from Morrigan’s intervention. It wasn’t that she had anything against the teyrn, but that his death had been the best option she could think of once learning that one of the Wardens had to die. Aelethenn never knew the whole of what the young Witch of the Wilds had planned, because she hadn’t let her finish her ritual’s explanation before sending Morrigan out of her rooms. She didn’t care then, and she found she still didn’t care now, over a year later. Alistair was gone, lost to her, and she wasn’t sure she would ever find him again. She was almost certain she would never get him back, even if she did somehow locate him, and that ate away at her every day. She felt as if she had failed him, failed to earn his trust enough to prevent his rash lashing out, his leaving. He hadn’t even let her explain her reasoning before storming off. The position she had accepted at Amaranthine was one she had never wanted, and then subsequently passed on to more willing and well-received hands as soon as she could. Nathaniel would do well there, she knew, with the inhabitants already familiar with him, and he already born and raised to do the job. She, on the other hand, would always have been an outsider there. Regardless that she was the Hero of Ferelden, so they called her nowadays, she would always be a mage and never truly “from” anywhere but the Circle.

So she left.

No one could stop her going, even if they had known about it—she did leave a letter for them all to find later, she wasn’t completely irresponsible, after all—and Aelethenn was a veritable thief in the night, stealing out of Amaranthine instead of into it. She hitched a ride west on a supply wagon as far as a little village in the Coastlands, and from there travelled on foot. She didn’t so much as have a destination in mind so much as not wanting to be in one place for a while. Or be around the Wardens, who reminded her too much of Alistair and the past year, fighting together against the Blight. Her only companion was Hraegn, the mabari hound who had chosen her before the battle of Ostagar and who was determined not to be left behind, hopping on the wagon with her as they were setting out. She gave the driver a few more silvers to accept the new passenger, and they were on their way. After leaving the little village, they wandered and she lent what help she could to people still struggling to get back on their feet from the Blight, and eradicated the small groups of darkspawn still foundering on the surface after the archdemon’s defeat. A year she and Hraegn spent like that, working the length and breadth of Ferelden, never lingering too long in one place. She never went near Ostagar, however, for her own bad memories and for Alistair’s.

In time, she found herself staring at the shores of Lake Calenhad once again, wondering if it would be the right thing to go back. Not to stay, she knew she couldn’t stay, but to stop by. She had requested the Circle be given reign over itself as one of the boons Anora promised her, and so they had. Aelethenn wanted to see if it had fully recovered from Uldred’s descent yet, to see how her old friends who were still alive were doing. She wanted to visit Irving and hear Gregoir grouse at him, the two more like a pair of brothers than templar and mage. And, she realised with surprise, she wanted to see Cullen again.

It had been some time since she thought of the templar who had caught her eye and her fascination in the tower, before Jowan lied to her and Duncan came and turned her life upside down. Her life had been in an almost constant upheaval since that day, and the only time she had remembered to worry and wonder about him was when they came back to the Circle only to find it overrun with abominations and death. But, before all that, she had always kept an eye out for him, looking down the hallways to see if he was standing guard. It wasn’t very often that the templars wore their helmets inside the Circle, but even when they did, she always knew him by his stance, and the way he moved. Aelethenn was adept at studying, and she spent some of her time watching Cullen in the library, learning his little movements, the expressions that played over his face.

But, she was a mage and he was a Templar. He was the Sword and she was the Ward. She hadn’t thought he returned her same fascination until he had been trapped in that prison constructed by Uldred and thought she was another hallucination made to drive him mad. It was then the confessions of his long-held feelings toward her tumbled from him like curses for her—and all who were with her—to hear. Of course, then it had been too late, she thought. There was the duty she had now as a Warden, and there was Alistair, who was not constrained by the Templar Order and was freer in voicing his affections for her. Who did not have his mind nearly broken by mad mages. For her to try and see if there was any affection left in him for a mage he had once stood over during her Harrowing after all he had been through—all brought about by mages—might have been the last thing his mind could have sustained. They saved Cullen and the rest of the Circle that was left alive and had to be on their way. She recalled Cullen hadn’t been able to meet her eyes as they were leaving, and she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to him before they were gone. And he had been put to the back of her mind as events escalated the closer they drew to cornering the archdemon.

And now she was on her way back to the Circle, with only regrets hanging over her head, rather than the urgency of the Blight. She travelled on foot again, with Hraegn at her side. She had left the old Circle robes behind long ago, and instead wore an homage of the Warden uniform, more suited to travel on the road and through rough terrain on foot. It didn’t immediately or even always brand her a Warden, though some had identified her as such after a little scrutiny. The last year spent traipsing all over Ferelden outside the familiarity of the Circle had taught her just how impractical robes were, and so she learned to wear light armour and tall, hard boots. Sometimes she wore a bit of mail to protect her torso, but now she had leather over her chest and back, and wrapping around her forearms. It was simple, but of a decent quality, dyed dark sepia and subtle blues per her request to pay homage to the Warden’s colours without announcing it to the whole of Ferelden. There were still many who didn’t trust them, despite all she had done to save them from the Blight. The thought sobered her again, and she pushed the rush of memories away firmly, and rested a gloved hand on Hraegn’s strong back to ground her and feel his strength.

He looked up at her, ears perked inquisitively, and she gave him a rueful look. “Just tired,” she told him. “We need to keep this pace if we are to reach the Circle by nightfall, though, so you cannot let me lag behind.”

He whuffed in response, his barrel chest expanding and releasing beneath her fingers. She liked to rest her hand on him when she felt worried or as if she were getting too lost within memories or herself. Hraegn was a comfort to feel for her, solid and always smelling of warm earth.

The tall grasses and the spring wheat stalks of the Bannorn waved in the breeze in either side of the road they were on, golden in the dying light of day. It was nearly autumn, with the end of Solace not more than two weeks away. Aelethenn knew little about working the land, but she knew that the harvest would be soon after the solemn rites of All Soul’s Day. She veered to the side of the road to run her hands along the golden beards of the wheat heads, feeling the hard, dry kernels rap against her fingers as she walked. A few of them fell off and littered the ground behind her wake, and Hraegn withdrew himself from under her other hand to go back and sniff them, his stub of a tail rapidly wagging. Aelethenn smiled back at him, and then turned her face to the setting sun. It hadn’t fallen behind the mountains on the northwestern horizon yet, and the burnished coppery glow still warmed her skin. The nights were not quite cool, but she could taste the season’s change in the air before it happened. It was something Aelethenn had always been sensitive to, as a mage with the affinity for the primal school of magic, and it seemed to her that it had only increased with her time away from the Circle and the honing of her power.

Hraegn nudged at her thigh, bringing her out of her thoughts. Aelethenn obligingly scratched behind his ears, a softness crinkling around her eyes in lines that had not been there two years ago. Seasons will always change, she told herself. For the world and for people, and she was now among those who made sure it would keep doing that, no matter what. It gave her more a sense of peace and substance than being in the Circle ever had—for all that she had loved the endless books and learning, nothing compared to all that she had now done and seen and learned by the work of her own hands. The Circle was never bad for her, luckily, and she had fond memories of it before Uldred fell into his weakness.

The two walked at a steady pace along the well-beaten road that swept through the Bannorn, curving up to Lake Calenhad at the westernmost point. It was just after nightfall when they arrived, as Aelethenn predicted. The templar who waited at the docks was not one she recognised, and the thought that many of them had fallen to abominations, as many as the mages even, rested quietly on her mind again. With the Blight over and the Circle set right, she hoped those still within its tower walls were able to start finding peace again—with each other and with themselves. She wondered if the smell of leather, of struck metal and old vellum mingling with death and blood and scorching magics would ever be able to be wiped clean from her memory of the first time she came back to the Circle after becoming a Grey Warden.

“Evening,” she called out to the templar as she approached.

“Good e'en,” he said in an accent she didn’t recognise. “You’re a Grey Warden?”

Templars always seemed to know. “I am. I would like to cross to the Circle, please.” She stopped by the edge of the docks, a few steps away from the Templar and just above where the boat gently rocked against the posts of the pier. “I hope that’s not an issue after sunset.” Aelethenn didn’t quite make it a question, but the slight lift in her voice could have been interpreted as such if the Templar wanted it to be.

“Well, not just anyone can cross t'the Circle, y'know. Leastwise, afore the Queen gave ‘em more freedom. Nowadays…” The templar shrugged. “Anyway, even if I could refuse you, Grey Wardens get more freedoms.” He gave her a sidelong look in the light of the torches through the golden-brown bangs that fell over his face. “Even if y'are a mage y'self.”

Aelethenn didn’t deny either of those statements; she didn’t say anything. The templar watched her a moment longer, then spit off the end of the pier and brushed past her to the mooring. Hraegn tensed beside Aelethenn, but she reassured him with a touch of her fingers, quieting the growl that she knew would have built in his chest otherwise. The templar crouched and untied the ropes anchoring the little dinghy to the pier, then looked up at her and jerked her head toward it.

“Well? Gonna get in'r what?”

Thanking him, Aelethenn stepped carefully down into the rocking boat, manoeuvring her staff in preparation to sit, when Hraegn jumped in. His weight pitched the small boat up and down violently, knocking Aelethenn off her balance and onto the wooden seat of the craft with more force than she expected.

“Graceful,” she chided, even as the templar above her on the pier let out a short laugh.

Following the hound with a great deal less rocking, the templar stepped into the boat, remaining on his feet to untie the rope mooring the boat to the pier.

“I’d say no dogs’d be allowed in th'Circle, but seein’ as how this is F'relen'n all…” he commented amicably, pushing off the pier before he took a seat and picked up the oars to row them across the lake to the Tower.

“Where are you from?” Aelethenn asked, watching him dip the oars into the water. She studied his face as they went, a deep bronze in colour, with a scattering of freckles across his hooked nose and sharp cheekbones.

The templar chuckled. “Far north'a here, that’s f'sure. Little place upwards Free Marches. You wouldn'a heard'f it.”

“How do you mind the winters down here?”

“Ah, not so well. Too cold'n wet.” Steadily, he rowed them across the water as smoothly as if they were being drawn by a winch on the other side.

Aelethenn couldn’t help but smile at that. “Yes, the cold and wet is something of a learned liking.” In response, the templar grunted half a chuckle as he pulled back on the rows.

Neither said much else the remaining minutes of the ride, the quiet pleasant rather than anything else, and Hraegn’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth as he watched all the fowl and fish the lake housed. Aelethenn absently rested her hand on his broad back, warmed still from walking in the sun all day. The templar—whose name she did not know, and as he hadn’t offered it to her, she did not ask him—let the oars drag to slow the little boat, which was quickly approaching the island pier. With the ease of someone who had been on watercraft a good portion of his life, the templar stood and grabbed the nearest post of the dock. Aelethenn watched him intently as he secured the mooring, tying the thick rope with quick, deft movements of his hands. Never once did he lose his balance in the gently rocking boat.

Once he was satisfied, the templar helped her and Hraegn out of the boat without a tumble into the water—though Hraegn came close, and would have had the templar not scooped the hound up by the haunches to force him up on the wooden dock. Aelethenn dipped her head and shoulders to him in thanks.

“Thank you, serah,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had a more pleasant boat ride.”

That made him snort with amusement. “I can tell you haven’t been'n many boats, then.”

Aelethenn smiled. “But you have. I hope you get to see the Minanter again sometime.” She straightened as he widened his eyes at her.

'How’d'ye…?” he trailed off.

“Far north in the Free Marches, such skill and obvious ease in a boat—even in plate.” A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “It’s the only river hundreds of boats float up and down in that part of Thedas, serah. The most likely answer as to where you’re from.”

He shook his head, an amused twist to his lips as she bid him a polite farewell. As she left the short wooden dock, he lit a short pipe before making his way back across the lake. There were matching boats on this side of the water, and templars to man them for when she wanted to leave again.

Turning from him to the familiar tower, she stood for a few moments, still and simply looking.

She was not sure what she would find within its walls, nor what she would do inside them, or even after she left them again. But it was a place to start.


End file.
